Notes from Egypt

Dearest Mutter,

I posted a letter for you at Girgeh, as we passed Siout with a good wind, I hope you will get it. My crew worked as I never saw men work, they were paid to get to Luxor, and for eighteen days they never rested or slept day or night, and all the time were merry and pleasant. It shows what power of endurance these ‘lazy Arabs’ have when there is good money at the end of a job, instead of the favourite panacea of ‘stick.’

We arrived at midnight and next morning my boat had the air of being pillaged. A crowd of laughing, chattering fellows ran off to the house laden with loose articles snatched up at random, loaves of sugar, pots and pans, books, cushions, all helter-skelter. I feared breakages, but all was housed safe and sound. The small boys of an age licensed to penetrate into the cabin, went off with the oddest cargoes of dressing things and the like—of backsheesh not one word. Alhamdulillah salaameh! ‘Thank God thou art in peace,’ and Ya Sitt, Ya Emeereh, till my head went round. Old Ismaeen fairly hugged me and little Achmet hung close to my side. I went up to Mustapha’s house while the unpacking took place and breakfasted there, and found letters from all of you, from you to darling Rainie, Sheykh Yussuf was charmed with her big writing and said he thought the news in that was the best of all.

The weather was intensely hot the first two days. Now it is heavenly, a fresh breeze and gorgeous sunshine. I brought two common Arab lanterns for the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj and his moolid is now going on. Omar took them and lighted them up and told me he found several people who called on the rest to say the Fathah for me. I was sitting out yesterday with the people on the sand looking at the men doing fantasia on horseback for the Sheykh, and a clever dragoman of the party was relating about the death of a young English girl whom he had served, and so de fil en aiguille we talked about the strangers buried here and how the bishop had extorted £100. I said, ‘Maleysh (never mind) the people have been hospitable to me alive and they will not cease if I die, but give me a tomb among the Arabs.’ One old man said, ‘May I not see thy day, oh Lady, and indeed thou shouldest be buried as a daughter of the Arabs, but we should fear the anger of thy Consul and thy family, but thou knowest that wherever thou art buried thou wilt assuredly lie in a Muslim grave.’ ‘How so?’ said I. ‘Why, when a bad Muslim dies the angels take him out of his tomb and put in one of the good from among the Christians in his place.’ This is the popular expression of the doctrine that the good are sure of salvation. Omar chimed in at once, ‘Certainly there is no doubt of it, and I know a story that happened in the days of Mahommed Ali Pasha which proves it.’ We demanded the story and Omar began. ‘There was once a very rich man of the Muslims so stingy that he grudged everybody even so much as a “bit of the paper inside the date” (Koran). When he was dying he said to his wife, “Go out and buy me a lump of pressed dates,” and when she had brought it he bade her leave him alone. Thereupon he took all his gold out of his sash and spread it before him, and rolled it up two or three pieces at a time in the dates, and swallowed it piece after piece until only three were left, when his wife came in and saw what he was doing and snatched them from his hand. Presently after he fell back and died and was carried out to the burial place and laid in his tomb. When the Kadee’s men came to put the seal on his property and found no money they said, “Oh woman, how is this? we know thy husband was a rich man and behold we find no money for his children and slaves or for thee.” So the woman told what had happened, and the Kadee sent for three other of the Ulema, and they decided that after three days she should go herself to her husband’s tomb and open it, and take the money from his stomach; meanwhile a guard was put over the tomb to keep away robbers. After three days therefore the woman went, and the men opened the tomb and said, “Go in O woman and take thy money.” So the woman went down into the tomb alone. When there, instead of her husband’s body she saw a box (coffin) of the boxes of the Christians, and when she opened it she saw the body of a young girl, adorned with many ornaments of gold necklaces, and bracelets, and a diamond Kurs on her head, and over all a veil of black muslin embroidered with gold. So the woman said within herself, “Behold I came for money and here it is, I will take it and conceal this business for fear of the Kadee.” So she wrapped the whole in her melayeh (a blue checked cotton sheet worn as a cloak) and came out, and the men said “Hast thou done thy business?”’ and she answered “Yes” and returned home.

‘In a few days she gave the veil she had taken from the dead girl to a broker to sell for her in the bazaar, and the broker went and showed it to the people and was offered one hundred piastres. Now there sat in one of the shops of the merchants a great Ma-allim (Coptic clerk) belonging to the Pasha, and he saw the veil and said, “How much asketh thou?” and the broker said “Oh thine honour the clerk whatever thou wilt.” “Take from me then five hundred piastres and bring the person that gave thee the veil to receive the money.” So the broker fetched the woman and the Copt, who was a great man, called the police and said, “Take this woman and fetch my ass and we will go before the Pasha,” and he rode in haste to the palace weeping and beating his breast, and went before the Pasha and said, “Behold this veil was buried a few days ago with my daughter who died unmarried, and I had none but her and I loved her like my eyes and would not take from her her ornaments, and this veil she worked herself and was very fond of it, and she was young and beautiful and just of the age to be married; and behold the Muslims go and rob the tombs of the Christians and if thou wilt suffer this we Christians will leave Egypt and go and live in some other country, O Effendina, for we cannot endure this abomination.”

‘Then the Pasha turned to the woman and said, “Woe to thee O woman, art thou a Muslimeh and doest such wickedness?” And the woman spoke and told all that had happened and how she sought money and finding gold had kept it. So the Pasha said, “Wait oh Ma-allim, and we will discover the truth of this matter,” and he sent for the three Ulema who had desired that the tomb should be opened at the end of three days and told them the case; and they said, “Open now the tomb of the Christian damsel.” And the Pasha sent his men to do so, and when they opened it behold it was full of fire, and within it lay the body of the wicked and avaricious Mussulman.’ Thus it was manifest to all that on the night of terror the angels of God had done this thing, and had laid the innocent girl of the Christians among those who have received direction, and the evil Muslim among the rejected. Admire how rapidly legends arise here. This story which everybody declared was quite true is placed no longer ago than in Mahommed Ali Pasha’s time.

There are hardly any travellers this year, instead of a hundred and fifty or more boats, perhaps twenty. A son of one of the Rothschilds, a boy of fourteen, has just gone up like a royal prince in one of the Pasha’s steamers—all his expenses paid and crowds of attendants. ‘All that honour to the money of the Jew,’ said an old fellah to me with a tone of scorn which I could not but echo in my heart. He has turned out his dragoman—a respectable elderly man, very sick, and paid him his bare wages and the munificent sum of £5 to take him back to Cairo. On board there was a doctor and plenty of servants, and yet he abandons the man here on Mustapha’s hands. I have brought Er-Rasheedee here (the sick man) as poor Mustapha is already overloaded with strangers. I am sorry the name of Yahoodee (Jew) should be made to stink yet more in the nostrils of the Arabs. I am very well, indeed my cough is almost gone and I can walk quite briskly and enjoy it. I think, dear Mutter, I am really better. I never felt the cold so little as this winter since my illness, the chilly mornings and nights don’t seem to signify at all now, and the climate feels more delicious than ever.

Mr. Herbert, the painter, went back to Cairo from Farshoot below Keneh; so I have no ‘Frangee’ society at all. But Sheykh Yussuf and the Kadee drop in to tea very often and as they are agreeable men I am quite content with my company.

Bye the bye I will tell you about the tenure of land in Egypt which people are always disputing about, as the Kadee laid it down for me. The whole land belongs to the Sultan of Turkey, the Pasha being his vakeel (representative), nominally of course as we know. Thus there are no owners, only tenants paying from one hundred piastres tariff (£1) down to thirty piastres yearly per feddan (about an acre) according to the quality of the land, or the favour of the Pasha when granting it. This tenancy is hereditary to children only—not to collaterals or ascendants—and it may be sold, but in that case application must be made to the Government. If the owner or tenant dies childless the land reverts to the Sultan, i.e. to the Pasha, and if the Pasha chooses to have any man’s land he can take it from him on payment—or without. Don’t let any one tell you that I exaggerate; I have known it happen: I mean the without, and the man received feddan for feddan of desert, in return for his good land which he had tilled and watered.

To-morrow night is the great night of Sheykh Abu-l-Hajjaj’s moolid and I am desired to go to the mosque for the benefit of my health, and that my friends may say a prayer for my children. The kind hearty welcome I found here has been a real pleasure, and every one was pleased because I was glad to come home to my beled (town), and they all thought it so nice of ‘my master’ to have come so far to see me because I was sick—all but one Turk, who clearly looked with pitying contempt on so much trouble taken about a sick old woman.

I have left my letter for a long while. You will not wonder—for after some ten days’ fever, my poor guest Mohammed Er-Rasheedee died to-day. Two Prussian doctors gave me help for the last four days, but left last night. He sank to sleep quietly at noon with his hand in mine, a good old Muslim sat at his head on one side and I on the other. Omar stood at his head and his black boy Khayr at his feet. We had laid his face to the Kibleh and I spoke to him to see if he knew anything and when he nodded the three Muslims chanted the Islamee La Illáhá, etc., etc., while I closed his eyes. The ‘respectable men’ came in by degrees, took an inventory of his property which they delivered to me, and washed the body, and within an hour and a half we all went out to the burial place; I following among a troop of women who joined us to wail for ‘the brother who had died far from his place.’ The scene as we turned in between the broken colossi and the pylons of the temple to go to the mosque was over-powering. After the prayer in the mosque we went out to the graveyard, Muslims and Copts helping to carry the dead, and my Frankish hat in the midst of the veiled and wailing women; all so familiar and yet so strange. After the burial the Imám, Sheykh Abd-el-Waris, came and kissed me on the shoulders and the Shereef, a man of eighty, laid his hands on my shoulders and said, ‘Fear not my daughter, neither all the days of thy life nor at the hour of thy death, for God is with thee.’ I kissed the old man’s hand and turned to go, but numberless men came and said ‘A thousand thanks, O our sister, for what thou hast done for one among us,’ and a great deal more. Now the solemn chanting of the Fikees, and the clear voice of the boy reciting the Koran in the room where the man died are ringing through the house. They will pass the night in prayer, and to-morrow there will be the prayer of deliverance in the mosque. Poor Khayr has just crept in to have a quiet cry—poor boy. He is in the inventory and to-morrow I must deliver him up to les autorités to be forwarded to Cairo with the rest of the property. He is very ugly with his black face wet and swollen, but he kisses my hand and calls me his mother quite ‘natural like’—you see colour is no barrier here.

The weather is glorious this year, and in spite of some fatigue I am extremely well and strong, and have hardly any cough at all. I am so sorry that the young Rothschild was so hard to Er-Rasheedee and that his French doctor refused to come and see him. It makes bad blood naturally. However, the German doctors were most kind and helpful.

The festival of Abu-l-Hajjaj was quite a fine sight, not splendid at all—au contraire—but spirit-stirring; the flags of the Sheykh borne by his family chanting, and the men tearing about in mimic fight on horseback with their spears. My acquaintance of last year, Abd-el-Moutovil, the fanatical Sheykh from Tunis was there. At first he scowled at me. Then someone told him how Rothschild had left Er-Rasheedee, and he held forth about the hatred of all the unbelievers to the Muslims, and ended by asking where the sick man was. A quaint little smile twinkled in Sheykh Yussuf’s soft eyes and he curled his silky moustache as he said demurely, ‘Your Honour must go and visit him at the house of the English Lady.’ I am bound to say that the Pharisee ‘executed himself handsomely, for in a few minutes he came up to me and took my hand and even hoped I would visit the tomb of Abu-l-Hajjaj with him!!

Since I wrote last I have been rather poorly—more cough, and most wearing sleeplessness. A poor young Englishman died here at the house of the Austrian Consular agent. I was too ill to go to him, but a kind, dear young Englishwoman, a Mrs. Walker, who was here with her family in a boat, sat up with him three nights and nursed him like a sister. A young American lay sick at the same time in the house, he is now gone down to Cairo, but I doubt whether he will reach it alive. The Englishman was buried on the first day of Ramadan where they bury strangers, on the site of a former Coptic church. Archdeacon Moore read the service; Omar and I spread my old flag over the bier, and Copts and Muslims helped to carry the poor stranger. It was a most impressive sight. The party of Europeans, all strangers to the dead but all deeply moved; the group of black-robed and turbaned Copts; the sailors from the boats; the gaily dressed dragomans; several brown-shirted fellaheen and the thick crowd of children—all the little Abab’deh stark naked and all behaving so well, the expression on their little faces touched me most of all. As Muslims, Omar and the boatmen laid him down in the grave, and while the English prayer was read the sun went down in a glorious flood of light over the distant bend of the Nile. ‘Had he a mother, he was young?’ said an Abab’deh woman to me with tears in her eyes and pressing my hand in sympathy for that far-off mother of such a different race.

Passenger steamboats come now every fortnight, but I have had no letter for a month. I have no almanack and have lost count of European time—to-day is the 3 of Ramadan, that is all I know. The poor black slave was sent back from Keneh, God knows why—because he had no money and the Moudir could not ‘eat off him’ as he could off the money and property—he believes. He is a capital fellow, and in order to compensate me for what he eats he proposed to wash for me, and you would be amused to see Khayr with his coal-black face and filed teeth doing laundry-maid out in the yard. He fears the family will sell him and hopes he may fetch a good price for ‘his boy’—only on the other hand he would so like me to buy him—and so his mind is disturbed. Meanwhile the having all my clothes washed clean is a great luxury.

The steamer is come and I must finish in haste. I have corrected the proofs. There is not much to alter, and though I regret several lost letters I can’t replace them. I tried, but it felt like a forgery. Do you cut out and correct, dearest Mutter, you will do it much better than I.